Tel: +44 (0) 843 357 1618

This week we launched the Android version of Firestone’s Tyre Pressure Calculator. Following the successful iOS version for iPhone, now downloaded over 5000 times and in 25 countries, Firestone Tyres requested we develop an Android equivalent. The Android operating system is the market leader in terms of mobile platforms, but developing for this creates a different set of challenges, not least due to the number of devices running Android and also the number of Android versions available – the market to say the least, is fragmented.

The approach we took was to identify the most widely used version of the operating system and test against the most popular smart phone devices running Android. The result is is a slick new version of the App available globally, featuring all of the functionality available on the iPhone equivalent which enables users to quickly identify the optimum tyre pressure they should be using for varying applications. Also worth mentioning is that the App isn’t just useful for people that own Firestone tyres, the user simply has to enter a tyre size and then the load associated to that axel and it will inform you of the correct tyre pressure at varying speeds – all of which will lead to an increase in tyre life, reduced soil compaction and big fuel savings.

The concept of “mobile” technology is increasingly impacting our lives, and businesses need to be in a position to understand how this fast changing environment can help them become more successful. RNF Solutions Managing Director, Rob Mannion and the National B2B Centre Directors, Martin King-Turner and Steve Orris realised the value of offering SME’s a training package that helps address this issue, and last week delivered the first course of its kind in the area.

The one day course was delivered from one of the B2B centres main training locations at Warwick University, and has a number of objectives.

1) Outline major industry trends – if you are going to consider an app for your business, build it on the right platform to meet your customers needs and save you considerable amounts of money.

2) Provide valuable case studies of real life app projects, enabling you to talk to your supplier with confidence about your requirements. Concepts include an app to support your customers and differentiate you from your competition, an app that generates revenue and an app to support your sales process.

3) Illustrate the process by which an app is designed and what it is likely to cost your business.

4) Consider whether you business actually need an app, as not all businesses do..

Initial feedback has been very positive and the second course is scheduled for the 29th May – please contact the National B2B Centre if you would like to learn more, or book a place..

Delegate feedback:

“Good information and explained very well – pitched at the correct level and understandable for a novice”

“Really useful and exactly what we needed to discuss our project with confidence and knowledge, to get the business to rethink current plans”

“Very interesting and informative, would recommend to others”

“Very good starting point to help understand apps”

We are delighted to have been invited to join the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business programme. Following a rigorous application and interview process we learnt this week that we have been successful in our application to join the prestigious scheme, aimed at supporting high growth businesses throughout the UK. Starting on March 5th, the initial kickoff meeting gives us an opportunity to meet with other successful business owners and provides us with over 100 hours of business training and mentoring over the next 6 months.

Rob Mannion, Managing Director of RNF Solutions said of the news “this is fantastic for our business, the programme is highly regarded and will provide us with invaluable resources to help us become even more successful, not to mention the excellent networking opportunities it will provide”.

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Following the recent announcement that RNF Solutions / Ruralnet Futures is a winner of the Business Accelerator scheme, part of the prize is 3 months worth of free advertising in the Courier Groups local newspapers. Our first advertisement appears in Fridays Courier, and we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to provide our followers with a sneak preview.

More observant readers will notice that the advertisement is to be run sideways to the rest of the page, an idea provided by our in-house designer Duncan Arrow, who also worked on the rest of the graphical design. Further input was provided by Andy Sylvester (of AndysDoesWords) who is an expert in providing professional and creative copy.

Andy commented ”When creating the ad, we considered its context – the local newspaper – and focused on our key audience, local SMEs. Most regional papers are visually very ‘busy’, so achieving standout to engage attention was a prime consideration. Although the free space provided was in ‘portrait’ format, Duncan, the designer, suggested we create a landscape format ad instead, and print it sideways. Great idea! I then wrote a strong benefit-led headline that encapsulates the unconventional positioning, followed by short copy that focusses on the business benefits of apps, and of using RNF Solutions as a highly experienced provider.”

Finally, this is our first project which has used the newly emerging technology of QR codes – readers can use their smartphone barcode to scan the code va the contact details, which automatically connects to the RNF Solutions website for further information.

It was announced today that RNF Solutions is one of three winners for the Business Accelerator award scheme this week. Part of the award includes having 3 months of advertising in the Courier newspapers and also access to two highly regarded mentors. RNF Solutions was recognised due to its high growth it has achieved and also in part due to its recent work developing effective mobile applications.

Working closely with the agricultural tyre specialists Firestone, a division of Bridgestone Tyres, we are proud to launch a new smartphone application for the iPhone. The App is called the Firestone Tyre Pressure Calculator (TPC), and we hope it will be a valuable tool in assisting users of Firestones agricultural tyres, to ensure they are operating the correct tyre pressure when using machinery.

More often than not, tyres  are over-inflated drastically reducing the life span. Firestones Business Development Manager, Barry Coleman says “It is not uncommon to visit customers and find tyres are over-inflated by anything upto 40%. Running tyres in this way can reduce the working life of tyres by literally 1000′s of hours”.

There is no absolute correct tyre pressure, as it is dependent on a number of factors such as the function the machinery is conducting, the surface it is working on, the distance the machine is travelling to and from the working environment etc. The benefits of operating an appropriate tyre pressure for your machinery are clear, as it will result in an increase in life span of the tyres, reduce costs to the farmer, less soil compaction and improved  working conditions whilst operating the tractor.

The underlying data which drives the calculations for this App are complex and not easily accessible without cross referencing a detailed set of tables from the manual. Despite having over 200 tyres, the App has been designed in such a way that the user only has a two step process to obtain the results. They simply select the tyre in question and then enter the load for that tyre. The results outline the correct tyre pressure for that tyre at a number of different speeds. An additional feature of the app enables users to identify their closest Firestone dealers based on either an alphabetical list, or on distance from the users location. Depending on whether the user is viewing the App on an iPhone or an iPad, the App will give the user options to dial out on the phone, or find the location of the dealer via Google maps.

Additional countries and associated dealer networks throughout Europe will be added to the App, and watch this space for the Android version which is also in the pipeline.

For further information relating to this article, please contact us

Click here to download the App from iTunes

Additional Screen shots

Since its inception in July 2009, the Ruralnet Futures team have been extremely busy. We have delivered 8 major Websites in the Content Management System WordPress, for organisations such as Bridgestone Tyres, Cambridgeshire County Council, Garden Organic and Digital Unite. We have delivered training plans on behalf of organisations such as Farmstay UK, and currently have 2 e-commerce projects due to go live in the next few weeks utlising the platform PrestaShop. Further to this we have successfully piloted the worldclass CO2 balancing software ECOREGION with Northumberland County Council, with a view to expanding to other Local Authorities . To date we have secured two major EU funded projects; Project Rurener and Project Efficient:20. Finally, next week we will be launching our first Smartphone App for a Global leader in its field.

All this activity means we need to restructure the organisation to enable us to do things even better. We can therefore announce the introduction of RNF Solutions as our lead brand. Sitting underneath the RNF Solutions brand will be 4 departments:

• RNF Web Development – WordPress, PrestaShop, Social Media, Training, e-Shot campaigns
• RNF Mobile – Smart Phone Apps, including iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms
• RNF Hosting – Web and Application hosting based out of London UK, with Backups via Amazon
• Ruralnet Futures – EU Projects and ECOSPEED CO2 balancing software solutions

We hope this structure reflects the growing business more clearly, and look forward to some exciting announcements in the near future. If you have any questions relating to this article please contact us.

Rob Mannion - Managing Director

ECORegion (by ECOSPEED Ltd.) is an online-software for carbon accounting in cities and communities. It is the only software which is officially recognised by the EU Commission. Over 1000 cities in 8 European countries are using this software. Here are some of the largest communities that are using ECORegion as their standard:

-       German state North Rhine-Westphalia (428 cities)

-       Swiss Cantons (26 cantons)

-       Covenant of Mayors Europe (120 cities)

-       European Energy Award Germany (100 cities)

-       European Energy Award Switzerland (50 cities)

-       Climate alliance Germany (150 cities)

-       Climate alliance Italy (30 cities)

-       Climate alliance Luxemburg (12 cities)

Ruralnet Futures is the UK-Partner of ECOSPEED Ltd. The first pilot  for ECORegion in UK is with Northumberland County Council and Ruralnet Futures will be managing the project which will be completed by the end of March 2011.

For further information please contact:

Rob Mannion at: robmannion@ruralnetfutures.co.uk

T: +44 (0)843 357 1618

The range of Bridgestone truck tyres is undergoing a complete overhaul during the coming twelve months with brand names and tyre specifications changing, new ranges being introduced and a general streamlining and improvement of the product offer. This is partly due to Bridgestone’s acquisition of Bandag; Europe’s leading retread organisation and the introduction of more environmentally friendly tyres under the Ecopia name.

The brief was to implement a cost effective method to keep Bridgestone’s target audience fully informed and continuously updated on the changes as and when they occur. With a broad audience including their own staff, tyre dealers and fleet customers buying direct, the use of conventional sales literature was deemed inappropriate as any brochures would become out of date almost as soon as they were printed.

We worked closely in conjunction Fitzgerald Marshall-Hardy Ltd, a specialised design and marketing agency based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. The solution was immediate in its message, easy to update and very cost effective, by using a combination of printed and electronic communication.

As part of Fitzgerald Marshall-Hardy’s overall solution, it was recommended that Ruralnet Futures develop a new website specifically to support the retread business, which would become the source for all product detail and brand changes; as this can be updated by the client with minimal cost as and when necessary. This was supplemented with a campaign of E-Shots to all Bridgestone customers (tyre dealers and fleet end users) alerting and directing them to the new website.

And finally printed Newsmailers to go out on a regular basis to alert customers, direct them to the website and carry news stories on Bridgestone product developments.

Steve Fitzgerald, a Director at Fitzgerald Marshall-Hardy said of the project “As some of these solutions needed specialists in the chosen fields we put together a team of organisations who we knew could deliver the services to the standard we required with FM-H acting as project managers whilst the solutions were implemented”

The new website can be seen here

Farmers from across the nine European countries participating in the Efficient20 project are looking forward to see their tractors’ fuel consumption fall in 2011.

Since the project’s launch in July, Ruralnet Futures and other Efficient20 project partners have been busy recruiting pilot groups of farmers and foresters to take part in implementing a variety of fuel saving measures that should see them making a 20% saving in diesel usage by 2013.

At a project meeting last week in Slovenia, French partners AILE (Association of Local Initiatives for Energy & Environment) who are coordinating pilot group recruitment reported that 26 pilot groups, comprising 200 farms, were now up and running.  Recruitment will continue into the New Year with the hope of establishing 30 pilot groups.  In the UK we are working with farmers in Staffordshire and Shropshire and are looking to set up our third pilot group in Warwickshire.

Austrian partners, the Francisco Josephinium Research Institute, presented a handbook of fuel saving measures which will form the core technical input to pilot group training sessions.  Compiled from over twenty years of research by agricultural institutes into tractor fuel efficiency coupled with extensive experience of delivering hands-on farmer training, the handbook covers everything from the effects of tractor maintenance and driver behaviour to operation specific factors such as correct selection of tyre pressures and optimal working depth for cultivation.

As we move into 2011, farmers will begin recording their fuel consumption for a variety of activities to identify where their greatest potential for fuel saving lies. Focused training and ongoing measurement will then help farmers chart their progress towards their 20% reduction target. With farmers reporting diesel prices topping 60p/litre in some areas of the UK – a staggering 30% rise on November prices – such savings can’t come quickly enough!